Hurt/Comfort: Stop Touch Kiss
by Rackham Rose
Summary: First in a series--After losing his eye, Subaru begins to gain something like understanding.


**_Stop Touch Kiss_**  
  
**Author's Note:**  
This piece is not only yaoi, but contains a non-explicit lemon; but then, if you clicked, I'm assuming you're okay with that, so no more warnings for you.  
This scene takes place right after Subaru loses his eye--or, rather, right after he gets out of the hospital.  
Dedicated to Becky, because she asked for it.  
*`-,--  
  
If he closed his eyes, Subaru could picture Seishirou's hands as clearly as his own.  
  
The man had beautiful hands, hands that should by rights have belonged to an artist or a musician. Long palms, long fingers, smooth-moving muscle beneath the pale skin... those hands could have teased beauty from any medium or instrument, or even from something so simple as a set of car keys or a pair of chopsticks. He could make a thing wonderful just by virtue of _being held._  
  
Sometimes he wondered if those hands could make him as beautiful... he doubted it, especially now that his eye was ruined. The hospital doctors' observations that he was underweight didn't help, either, and he was fairly certain he wasn't one of those people who could make smoking look classy.  
  
...smoking. Shit. His cigarettes had disappeared at the hospital--probably some concerned orderly's doing--and now that he could finally walk distances without collapsing in a dizzy heap, his blood burned for nicotine.  
  
He figured he deserved a smoke anyways, if only for having made it all the way from the hospital to his apartment on foot; now, as he fumbled in his trenchcoat for his keys, he closed his good eye briefly and tried to recall if he had left any cigarettes in the apartment just before he'd been injured.   
  
Wait... he remembered now, he probably still had at least part of a pack left. Sometime after his twentieth birthday, he'd discovered that he needed an extra pack "just in case"; mentally he referred to it as a safety pack. He kept it close to his pillow, sometimes even under it, in case the day had been bad enough to require a late-night cigarette; he'd been nursing this particular safety pack for two very hard weeks.  
  
Vertigo spiked through him briefly; he opened his eye with a soundless gasp, trying not to sway on his feet.  
  
Painkillers. That was what he needed. Painkillers and alcohol and a very long cigarette break, probably not in that order.  
  
Once he had found his keys and stumbled over the threshold, he made a beeline for the bedroom. Sure enough, there on the night-table was the safety pack... there were five or six cigarettes left, more than enough to steady his nerves until he could get to the kitchen for an aspirin.   
  
"Glad to see you're feeling better, Subaru-kun."  
  
...oh god. Not that voice. His heart twisted in his chest; he had to pull together all of his resolve to keep himself from crumpling right there.  
  
Soft footsteps, tiny whispers of sound, moved towards him; he felt a vague shape of body-heat looming behind him. His mind screamed at him--_no, stop, hurt, love, **need**_--but he couldn't move.  
  
With an unmistakeable click and hiss, a lighter sparked into life behind him.  
  
The screaming in his head was beginning to run together into a deafening stream of not-sound; his half-vision began to fuzz at the edges--he was going to fall, he could already feel his legs giving out--  
  
Time stopped.  
  
Subaru fully expected to feel the carpet scratching gently against his cheek, and the palms of his hands stinging with rug-burn; but through the fading edges of vertigo tugging at his mind, all he could feel was warmth, as if he were suspended--  
  
As if he were being held.  
  
"Shh, Subaru-kun, deep breaths."  
  
Had he stopped breathing? He'd forgotten. With an effort he forced his lungs to fill again; the white edge went off of his eyesight slowly, and his senses bent themselves back into shape.  
  
He smelled cigarettes and earth and rain and cologne. He felt strong arms around his waist, a harness to keep him from falling. He heard the smooth, steady glide of breathing, still untainted by a smoker's rasp.  
  
And when he finally let himself look up--  
  
He had to wonder if Seishirou knew, really _knew,_ how beautiful he was. Like a hawk with a bloodied beak, like the long forward spill of an avalanche, like cigarette smoke--he was stunning in that way that was tainted but _necessary._  
  
The assassin flashed him a little, devastating smile.  
  
"I said deep breaths, plural." His tone was gently scolding. "You shouldn't have been on your feet today."  
  
Subaru took another breath; his legs began to feel less like jelly.   
  
"You could have taken a taxi home, you know."  
  
"Don't like cars."  
  
Subaru was a little astonished at the sound of his own voice--it was a dry, whispery croak, a few notes removed from a death-rattle. Seishirou, however, seemed completely (predictably) unruffled.  
  
"Well, you don't have to be in one now. In fact, I think you're not entirely ready to be in anything but your own bed."  
  
He couldn't stop the heat that rose to his face; privately he wished he weren't quite so easy to embarrass. Seishirou's brand of teasing had always made him feel hopelessly confused, as if he had been handed a coded message but not its key.   
  
"Let me up."  
  
Seishirou helped him tug himself back into a standing position; he wobbled briefly before righting himself.  
  
"Subaru-kun, at least sit down."  
  
Part of him would have liked nothing better than to scream _Fuck you, leave me alone;_ the rest of him simply pointed out the weakness in his knees, and he sat heavily on the bed.   
  
Warmth and weight sank into the mattress next to him. He should, he knew, have lashed out against the invasion of his personal space (after all, he usually stayed a good six inches from anyone), but...  
  
But...  
  
He'd had a hard week. Hell, he'd had a hard year. He _craved_ little comforts like cigarettes and classical music and, yes, the sheer solid presence of someone else's touch.  
  
No. Not just someone. The someone who was with him now, here, _somehow_ inside his apartment and stroking his shoulder as if they had been comforting each other all their lives.  
  
It was so natural as to be almost frightening.  
  
Subaru looked up; the older man was watching him intently, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  
  
"Why are you being so... kind?"  
  
The assassin brushed gently at Subaru's forehead, teasing his bangs away from his good eye.  
  
"I should make an effort to take care of what's mine, don't you think?"  
  
For a long moment there was nothing but quiet between them, a lull that seemed to stretch into eternity.  
  
Then the miracle happened.  
  
It was not that Seishirou kissed him or that he kissed Seishirou--the kiss simply _happened,_ short and electric and brilliant. Subaru felt all the breath in his body lock up in one quick rush; this was a dream, this was too _free of hurt_ to be happening--  
  
And then came the second kiss, deeper and more insistent, and his mind deserted him.  
  
Seishirou's hands were on his face, on his shoulders, sliding down his chest; kiss followed kiss in a hot mindless current. Had Subaru's thoughts been coherent enough to be words, those words would have been _god nine years why didn't this happen nine years ago,_ but with their bodies pushed so close together and the taste of cigarettes and heat in his mouth--  
  
He moaned.  
  
His fingers tangled in fabric and in hair; the stars on the backs of his hands prickled with stinging warmth. His bandaged eye, squeezed shut beneath the layers of gauze, was sending little waves of not-quite-pain through his skull; but that hardly mattered, now that he was floating, drifting--  
  
_Falling--_  
  
The dark fabric of Seishirou's jacket bunched up beneath his fingers. His good eye struggled to find a focus in the world outside the kiss, and suddenly he was gasping for breath again, trying to remember how his lungs worked and fighting down the rising tide of fear that threatened to chill and crack the muscles in his chest.  
  
"Shh, shh..." Two fingertips traced the curve of his cheek; smooth lips feathered a kiss against the corner of his mouth. "Easy. Deep breaths."  
  
"Sorry..."  
  
And he was, a little, partly for being afraid and partly for not having invited his Wish upon himself the moment he'd heard that lighter click into life. Rational thought crept in for a brief moment to ask him why the hell a serial killer would choose to be on his bed kissing him instead of simply taking his heart out--and he was sorry for thinking that too.  
  
But his mouth nearly went dry with the need for another kiss, and he was sorry he didn't know how to ask for it.  
  
"I'm fine," he whispered.  
  
"You would say that." He felt a smile curve against his cheek, and quiet slipped between them for another moment before Seishirou spoke again:  
  
"Lie down."  
  
It was not a command, and it was not a request. Subaru leaned back as slowly as he could manage; the little whirlpool of vertigo behind his blinded eye slowed. Seishirou's mouth found his again, and his taste was already familiar, layered and dark and disconcertingly _human_ on his tongue. The older man's weight settled slowly across him, a stormcloud gathering force for a hurricane...   
  
Subaru felt the zipper of his sweatshirt sliding open.  
  
For a moment his brain seemed to register that this meant something significant, and then suddenly there were fingers against his skin, drawing teasing traces of warmth along his collarbone. He nearly choked on the kiss, but the burst of feeling that shot through his ribcage was more like the hot rush of a first swallow of _sake_ than anything else...   
  
_Don't stop,_ he wanted to plead, _hold me kill me hurt me just don't stop now..._  
  
The muscles in his belly jumped and twitched as that wonderful/terrible touch danced lower, and lower still, tracing dips and hollows and angles as if the skin were not something to be touched but _sculpted._ He arched up into the contact as if losing it would crush him, whimpering as Seishirou's lips wandered to his cheek, his throat, the little hollow at the very base of his neck.  
  
Subaru's vision slurred; his own breathing was a loud rasp in his ears, each exhale carrying the hiss of Seishirou's name, and then--finally--the single syllable he'd been unable to choke out:  
  
_"Please..."_  
  
Then he felt the assassin's hand press down gently over his mouth, and the whispers turned to ash on his tongue.  
  
"Shh, Subaru-kun." Seishirou's voice was an outright purr, dark and sinuous, and Subaru couldn't help but shiver. "Remember, deep breaths."  
  
He wanted to make some reply, to scrape together enough brainpower for some kind of comment--  
  
And then Seishirou's fingers were sliding down to his belt buckle, curling around it and tugging lightly.  
  
Subaru's lungs filled deeply with an inadvertent gasp. This was--this couldn't be happening--that was _not_ the Sakurazukamori's hand working open his belt, deliberately brushing the base of his palm over his fly...  
  
He tried to ask _why_ into Seishirou's palm, but the word shuddered into another gasp. Those long artisan's fingers had flicked open the top button of his jeans and were sliding down the zipper, parting the fabric to steal towards the pulse of low heat beneath--  
  
Subaru's eyes slammed shut.  
  
He was being pulled down into velvet. Seishirou's hand curled around him and stroked slowly, as if he were trying to learn the texture of the taut skin by heart; little shocks of pleasure raced down through his thighs and up across his hips, turning the darkness behind his eyes red and gold. And, oh, it didn't hurt, it didn't hurt at all, it was confusing and wonderful and just exactly what he needed...  
  
No--the thought was punctuated with another gasp as his hand began to move faster--that wasn't all. He needed something to hold on to. One hand sought the broad curve of Seishirou's shoulder and gripped it, the pentagram burning through skin and muscle all the way into his blood; this sensation on top of all the others was almost too much--his heart hammered at the very edge of something that threatened to turn his whole body into nothing more than a fuzz of white light--  
  
_"Beautiful."_  
  
That word was all it took. Subaru's mind fell in on itself in a single bright burst; his senses locked down and collapsed under the sheer relief of surrender.  
  
And then, when he could hear again:  
  
"Breathe."  
  
Tension was flooding from his muscles; his eyelids were suddenly heavy, and each breath came more easily than the last. Seishirou's hand slid from his mouth gently; his lips pressed briefly against Subaru's before he drew back and stretched out next to him on the narrow bed.  
  
"You should sleep, Subaru-kun," he murmured.  
  
Subaru opened his good eye and glanced over at the man beside him.  
  
And somehow, before the fog of exhaustion or confusion or self-loathing could begin to cloud him, he managed to speak.   
  
"Not yet."  
  
Seishirou half-smiled, and brushed a thumb across his lips.   
  
"If you insist." 


End file.
